


Synthetic Attraction

by NinjaFairy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Angst, Broody Draco Malfoy, F/M, Gangs, Hate at First Sight, Hopeful Ending, Jealousy, Optimistic Hermione, Plot Twists, Possessive Behavior, Post-Apocalypse, Saving the World, Science Fiction, Smut, Survival, Suspense, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence, i don't do fluff, seriously, that explosive chemistry tho, these two are a train wreck, urban survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 22:10:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14882148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinjaFairy/pseuds/NinjaFairy
Summary: They created something that was supposed to help the human race survive, not wipe it out to near extinction. Hermione and her team of geneticists team up with the top pharmaceutical engineer in the country, Draco Malfoy, to help develop a much-needed cure for the disease. But will they be able to survive long enough to save the entire world? [Dramione. Post apocalyptic Muggle AU.]





	Synthetic Attraction

**Note:**  I know, another WIP, but I've been working on this one for a few months. I originally had it posted on my other account that I use for non-Tomione fics. Then I realized...why should I not post non-Tomione fics under my main account? This fic shouldn't be long at all. That's what I always say, but that never pans out, does it? lmao Thanks to everyone who has been so patient with my bullshit. I know. I'm a mess. Thanks to Pans for looking through this chapter for me.

I should mention that this story mostly takes place in 2175. It will be a post-apocalyptic Muggle AU. I've been wanting to write a futuristic post-apocalypse fic for a while now, so here we go. This big ol' ho is writing one.

Hold onto your panties, bitches. It's gonna be a wild ride. Enjoy.

* * *

 

 

 

In the Beginning

_September 17th, 2174. 7:32 a.m._

This story begins with a cup of coffee.

"Did you make sure mine has a shot of espresso in it?" Hermione Granger asked before removing the lid of her cup and sniffing the contents.

Lavender Brown rolled her eyes at her co-worker's particularity and set the carrying tray of cups down on the desk. " _Yes_ , Hermione. And two sugars. This isn't the first time I've gone on a coffee run, you know."

Hermione smiled, then put the lid back on.

"I know. It's just going to be another long day in the lab again," she said, pausing long enough to take a small sip. She scrunched her nose slightly. It was a little more bitter than she preferred it to be, but oh well. Caffeine was caffeine. Hermione continued, "We're so close to finishing this, Lav.  _So…close_."

"I don't know about you two, but I've been so excited, I've hardly slept at all," added Neville Longbottom, who'd just joined them to retrieve his share of the coffee. He took a sip and said, "I'm honestly not sure I even need this. All the hard work we've put into this project, all the long days, all the sleepless nights, all the board meetings, and little hiccups with funding have finally led up to this day."

Hermione couldn't help but smile at Neville's infectious cheer. She nodded. "Today is the day we've been waiting for. Just imagine all the people in the world we'll be saving with your creation, Neville -"

"No, no," his face reddened with modesty. "If it weren't for you, this would have never happened to begin with."

"Well, if it weren't for your idea, we wouldn't have been brought here to help you," Hermione challenged encouragingly.

"And if you two keep stroking each other's modesties like that, we'll get absolutely nothing done today," Lavender cut it abruptly, casually sipping her coffee while tapping the three-dimensional screen of her holophone.

Hermione leveled a withering look on an oblivious Lavender. Lavender was a great intern – a nice enough girl, really – but she still had some growing up to do. Hermione kept telling herself that Lavender was only twenty – that she needed to be more  _patient_  with her, but some days she made it so  _damn difficult_  with her negative attitude.

"R-right," Neville stuttered. "We should get to work, yeah?"

Hermione and Neville taught at the prestigious university of Hogwarts School of Engineering. They had both attended Hogwarts together a few years before and found out they made a good team. Together, they earned many awards on their advancements in their field, which earned them teaching positions at Hogwarts at the early age of twenty-five.

Before they'd been offered their teaching positions, they'd traveled to Africa together to do some charity work after graduation. They weren't there for long before they discovered that the condition of the quality of life for the people there was worse than it had ever been. There was disease and famine and death.

It broke their hearts and it was during one night, in the quiet of their shared hut after bringing food to malnourished children, when one of them – she couldn't remember who now – asked this question: what can we do to help them?

The two most important things to sustain life were water and food. Water, they couldn't really control. But food, Neville realized, they had the capabilities to do something about.

That's when they began to research and plan. It took two years of shaping Neville's idea between their work and personal lives to come up with something that could work: they could create a vegetable. They could create a vegetable that could grow quickly during any season, in any climate, with very little care and still thrive. They could create a vegetable that held great nutritional value, so people could survive on the vegetable alone.

They could create a vegetable that would save the world.

They only had one obstacle: money.

It was easy to get funding for their project from the university once they showed what they would be bringing to the table. No one needed to be convinced otherwise. Hermione even remembered the usually disgruntled Professor Snape muttering something about the Nobel Prize.

Aside from the trial and error that came with the field of genetic engineering, it was smooth sailing after that. They had a dozen plants growing in the lab that were in the testing phase, but they were just about done. So far, all the results came back with flying colors.

Hermione felt ecstatic as they walked together toward the lab. She took another sip of her coffee and decided that it wasn't all that bitter after all.

* * *

_October 28th, 2174. 2:23 p.m._

The lights flashed too brightly and she had to close her eyes, but she didn't let her smile fall.

The reporters questioned them, congratulated them, photographed them. It was an overwhelming process that Hermione didn't enjoy experiencing, but it was a small price to pay for their success.

They'd done it.

* * *

_December 31st, 2174. 7:03 p.m._

Once things settled down a bit, life became dull again. There was nothing to work on that gave her life a greater purpose and it was the holidays, so she didn't even have assignments to grade. All she had was the last of her wine, her ornery cat, and the cyberspace to keep her company.

Hermione checked in on their 'Viable Veggie' (as Neville endearingly called it) by reading news articles on her holophone via the cyberspace. Seeds had been harvested, packaged, and sent to different farms and greenhouses across the world. It grew quickly, so the first batch of the vegetable had already been shipped to impoverished countries in need a few weeks ago. It didn't take long before the general population in first world countries caught wind of the miracle vegetable, and health food enthusiasts selfishly demanded access to it, as well.

Hermione and Neville had voiced their opinion that people in need should have access to it first. They needed a chance to plant their own crops of it to help sustain them, and  _then_  countries who didn't need it right away could have access to it.

Unfortunately, Hermione and Neville were reminded that running this agricultural operation was  _not_  cheap, so selling limited quantities to the public in grocery stores would actually  _help_ the people in need, not hurt them.

Hermione and Neville begrudgingly agreed.

Hermione sighed and turned her holophone off. Her fiery, long-haired cat, Crookshanks, jumped into her lap and nudged her hand, demanding attention. She gave a small smile. "Finally happy I'm home more, aren't you?"

Crookshanks purred in reply.

Hermione's smile fell as she absently ran her hand over his back. She set her wine glass down on the side table – it was just empty as she had been feeling lately. She loved her life – she really did, but she felt like something had been missing for a long time now. She thought it was just having meaning in her life, so she threw herself into her work. But it wasn't until they finished with everything when she realized she'd been lying to herself by filling that void with work.

Hermione realized what she wanted. She wanted a family of her own.

It was stupid, really. She'd always told herself that she wasn't that interested in having children. It was the hormones, that biological clock ticking away, but it couldn't be helped. She couldn't ignore that strong maternal urge. And she'd always told herself that she wasn't a lonely person, so she never bothered pursuing romantic interests.

"Well, to be fair, they never bothered pursuing me, either," she laughed. Crookshanks turned his head to her.

"I guess that's what happens when you're a workaholic, eh?" she muttered out loud, continuing to absently run her fingers through his long fur. Crookshanks meowed in reply.

Hermione hummed.

"I could always adopt, too. It's not like I need to find someone, get married, and…" she paused, stared at Crookshanks, then she groaned. "Oh, my God. No, no. I'm turning into a crazy cat lady. This is  _not_  acceptable."

Hermione went to stand and Crookshanks jumped off her lap. She marched straight to her bedroom and started ransacking her closet for something decent to wear. She wasn't the type to go out and party on New Year's Eve, but she was  _not_  about to sit at home after this shocking realization, because,  _damn it_ , she was a successful, intelligent, independent twenty-seven-year-old woman.

After she slipped into one of her nicer black dresses, she stared at herself in front of the mirror. Hermione played with her hair a little bit and thought, with a  _little_ bit a work, she could easily catch a respectable man's interest. Maybe. Possibly. Lord, she  _hoped_.

"Damn it," she groaned, then fell back hopelessly onto her bed. "I'm not going out. Forget this. I'll just go get more wine and stay home. There's nothing wrong with becoming a crazy cat lady."

* * *

_December 31st, 2174. 8:28 p.m._

It was only supposed to be a simple wine run, but no. No, since it was New Year's Eve, finding her favorite wine – or any wine at all, as a matter of fact – was proving to be a major inconvenience. She'd walked to three different establishments and  _none_  of them had her wine.

After leaving the fourth one empty-handed, Hermione decided that her New Year's Eve was just going to have to be as sad and pathetic as it started out, sans wine and sans company. And to make matters worse, the flurries that had been gently falling all night turned into a miniature blizzard. How fitting. How perfect.

"Eh, at least I've got Crooks back home," she muttered to herself as she tucked her freezing hands in the sleeves of her jacket and started walking back home.

Hermione heard someone snort loudly to her right and she almost gave herself whiplash from trying to find the source. She swore that her heart fell straight to her arse when she first saw him standing there. The first thing she noticed about him were his eyes – they were a shocking shade of icy blue that she'd never seen on another human being before. And, of course, the geneticist in her immediately went into the probabilities of him being born with eyes that color and –  _oh, my God_ , but then he did this weird, cocky  _smirk_  thing that sent her heart racing and she thought that,  _maybe_ , he was smirking at  _her_. But there was no way he could be, right? There were plenty of other people walking up and down this sidewalk and there was  _no way_  someone who looked like a bloody  _model_  would be looking at  _her_  and –

That's when she noticed his humored eyes were directly on hers and she briefly wondered if he held some sort of technology that could pin a person to their spot just by  _looking_  at them and –  _oh, shit_. Hermione felt embarrassed rage course through her veins when she realized that he was probably  _laughing_  at her for talking to herself out loud like some sort of lunatic.

"Excuse me? Did you find something I said funny?" Hermione asked irritably.

She swore, she could hear her pulse thrumming in her ears when he lazily lifted a hand to run through his platinum blonde hair, causing the snow that had settled there to melt at his touch. Hermione shivered when she thought of how  _she_  would probably melt at his touch, too and –  _damn it._

He quirked his eyebrows at her question and his smirk widened. "I just thought it was a bit… _odd_  to be so enthused about going back home to a flat filled with criminals. That isn't something most people look forward to, I would think."

Hermione frowned in confusion. "Criminals…? Oh, wait. Crooks? You mean my cat?"

His eyes widened in faux shock.

"Oh, God. You're a furry? I'm not the type of person to kink shame or anything…" he trailed off, his smirk turning into a small grin that showed perfectly white teeth that her parents would absolutely  _adore_  and – wait, what the fuck did he just say?

"What!?" she snapped, her voice cracking. Blood rushed to her face. "I'm not a  _furry_! And I don't have any…any  _kinks_!"

"Listen, it'll be 2175 in a few hours. Get with the times, woman. Just embrace your weird-ass furry fetishes," he replied in a rather condescending tone.

Hermione's mouth hung open in shock. Alright, it didn't matter  _how_  attractive she found him – this guy was a total prick. Why were the good-looking ones  _always_  pricks? Was that a hereditary trait, as well? Either way, she wasn't putting up with it.

"Well, even if I  _was_  into that sort of thing – which, by the way, I am  _not_ – it would be far more enjoyable than having to spend another minute in  _your_  presence," Hermione retorted nastily.

Something in his eyes changed and his smirk fell. He stepped toward her and leaned in close to whisper cruelly in her ear, "Then  _leave_. I'm not keeping you here. Let me take a wild guess as to what is  _really_  keeping you here: the only thing you have to look forward to after this is a flat filled with the sound of silence, because your home is empty and your life is empty and the only things you have to fill it with is your work and your wine and your cat. Now, tell me, how close am I?"

 _Too close_.

Hermione's bottom lip quivered. He was so close that it caused her physical pain. How could a total stranger realize more about her in just a few minutes than she'd ever had?

He pulled away from her and she spotted the slightest hint of surprise in his eyes when he saw that she was crying. "Oh, shit. I suppose I was closer than I'd originally thought, it seems."

Hermione shakily sucked in a gulp of frigid air. "You're a right prick, you know that?"

He shoved his hands in his designer jacket defensively and frowned at her. "So I've been told."

"Whatever. I don't have to put up with you. Piss off, whoever you are," she spat out, then did her best to quickly disappear into the crowd.

Hermione could have sworn she heard him call out for her to  _no, stop! Wait!_ , but she also could have sworn she was probably mistaken.


End file.
